Bradley Simpson

Does a Gold Medal at the Olympics in Track and Field ‘count’ for as much as a Gold Medal in the Synchronised Swimming? How about a Gold in the Women’s 100m versus a Bronze in Taekwondo Women under 49kg? On the current medal tables used by the media and the IOC the the answer to both questions is clearly yes.

Counting only Total, and Total Gold Medals to me seems a little archaic. The first especially. I mean, can you honestly tell me who finished third in the 100m final (let alone the under 49kg TKD)? It seems very strange to me that under the ‘Total Medals’ scoring systems a bronze is worth as much as a gold, when we all know it is not.

But it does not have to be this way. Using a scientifically sophicitaded formula I have made up formulated of giving 10 times the value to Track and Field medals than all other sports, because lets face it, it is what the Olympics is all about, and 5 points for gold, 3 for silver, 1 for bronze to all medals, I believe we can really see who the top performing countries are*. The result:

The big losers are Germany, China, Korea, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Romania, and Canada who all obviously get many of their medals from non-Track and Field sports. The big winners: Kenya, Belarus, and Ethopia. I would be interested to know how much these later countries spend on their elite sportsmen. I doubt very much it is close to the AUS$40 million per gold Australia ‘paid’. This is the reason some people include a GDP factor also.

But even this is not a fair result as it does not take into account the population pool of these countries. Is it really fair to compare China with Jamica? Not really. Therefore we need to adjust these results to reflect per capita. And so the final rankings of the 2008 Summer Olympics are:

No personal offence was intended towards Dalia Contreras Rivero in the writing of this blog. Congratulations to her from everyone at KitchenPT.com.

 * I only used the top 30 countries on the current medal count system